Breaking Bones

I'm dying.

None of the doctors can give me a time line yet. I suppose I have anywhere between a day and eighty years left to live.

This is unfortunate, considering the fact that I am approaching my twentieth birthday. The universe is telling me to figure out who I am. And I have anywhere between a day and eighty years in which I am to do just that.

This is a stressful time in my life, to say the least. I was once a fingernail biter. As far as vices go, it was a pretty good one. But recently I stopped biting my nails. Now I have ten beautifully sculpted helmets for my nail beds, and one less reliever of stress. I've added at least five to ten pounds onto my rumpus within the last few months, reverting to food for my main source comfort. I don't blame myself. I blame society for convincing me that I needed to stop eating my own keratin inbetween meals.

I could probably exercise more. But it's much easier to think about exercising, rather than to actually get up and move. I do more exercising of the brain than I do of the body. I've only broken one bone in my entire life so far and I wasn't even a year old at the time. Either I have bones of steel or I move so little that I avoid most physical dangers altogether. When I DO move, I usually fumble or waver as though I'm about to fall. I can't count how many times I've nearly fallen down a flight of stairs. But the practice of being tripped in grade school has increased my agility to a level beyond my own understanding. At some point, I became immune to tripping over other people's feet. Most of the time now, I just trip over imaginary objects or small cracks that may or may not really be there.

I have a couple of guy friends who tell me to exercise (let's call them Jeff and Alex). They say things like, "Go on a diet! It's good for you." Mind you, these guys are like (negative) 40 lbs each. And I guess they've never had any proper training in conversing with women. Granted I'm not a typical woman, but I'd still like for a guy to find a more creative way of calling me fat. I went out for lunch with Alex once... I ordered something general, overflowing with carbohydrates and protein. Alex ordered a salad. How the fuck am I supposed to take a salad-consuming man seriously? I felt like a pig, he looked like a cow! Grazing in a pasture, that's what it looked like. And when we parted that day, I couldn't even bring myself to hug him. I was afraid I would break him.

This is all coming from someone with BDD (body dysmorphic disorder). When I was younger, and I do mean a lot younger, I was somehow able to survive about four almost-consecutive episodes of strep throat. Scientists somewhere decided that strep throat is a leading factor in the development of OCD in children. I'm going to shrug and say that it's true. It really is amazing - the things I obsess about. But if I really went into depth about my disorder, you might catch it too.

The real question is-- Does any of it really matter? Bones break, they heal. Fat grows, we can change that (if/when we want to). Breasts can be lifted, augmented, or reduced. And some men simply choose to be anorexic pussies. Maybe we are merely bodies taking up space. It shouldn't really matter HOW MUCH space we take up, as long as we're not reproducing as quickly as China is. No offense China, if you're reading this. I do plan to adopt a few of your female infants one day.